French press review 24 November 2009

by Michael Fitzpatrick

Article published on the 2009-11-24 Latest update 2009-11-24 07:52 TU

Climate change, illegal immigrants and the war in Iraq are all made it into todays dailies

Business daily Les Echos is worried about the environment . . . not the business one, the breathing one. According to the paper's main headline, the real truth about greenhouse gas emissions is even worse than the pessimists have been warning. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is growing exponentially, and even methane is on the increase. Luckily, world leaders are going to meet in Copenhagen next month to sort all that out.

Right-wing Le Figaro looks at the opposition Socialists, a problem even less soluble than that of global warming. Party leader Martine Aubry recently called for the legalisation of the vast French army of foreigners without rights, the illegal immigrants who are exploited by their employers and who contribute nothing to state coffers. Most socialists have remained silent on the issue, perhaps because it seems like political suicide in the current climate. The government is, meanwhile, doing its best to return the immigrants to their countries of origin, with hardly a whimper of protest from anyone.

Le Monde reviews a new book by Carla Del Ponte, she who used to be chief prosecutor at the international criminal tribunal. The book has the rather dramatic title "My life chasing war criminals", but then, Mrs Del Ponte has had a rather dramatic professional career, trying to bring Yugoslavian and Rwandan killers to justice.

It was a tough job, as Del Ponte discovered when she tried to get the Rwandan Patriotic Front of current president Paul Kagamé to answer for its own crimes in the wake of the Hutu genocide. That effort got her sacked from her job at the Tribunal, and leaves a huge question mark over the possibility of justice and reconciliation in Rwanda.

Del Ponte admits she made a few tactical mistakes. "But I said what was on my mind," she concludes, "and I make no apologies to anyone."


Le Monde also looks at a commission set up in London to ask questions about Britain's involvement in the invasion of Iraq six years ago.

Forty-five thousand British soldiers were sent to Iraq to save the planet from Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Now, people want to know why. They also want to know why the troops dispatched were so poorly trained and ill-equipped for the conditions in Iraq. And the commission will attempt to unravel the mystery of a container-load of skis, sent with the departing soldiers, who were stationed in the desert around Basra. It hasn't snowed in Basra for about 40,000 years.